• Keith Giffen & company go nuts and change the word baloons on an old comic!

Ahah! And might amusing it is too. My friendly but decidedly un-geeky and un-nerdy comic book guy says to me that it's a shame that it doesn't sell better. We debate how on earth they could make it any clearer exactly what the comic is. Surely the olde worlde artwork will just put potential fans off with a glance? It's not exactly a full-blown subgenre - comic comedy rewrites, I'll call it - and it's certainly new to me. Apparently Marvel had something similar on the go recently with romantic strips. But it's great. I liked Giffen's amusing work on Justice League of America way back, and knew he could write funnies.

This edition of WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? is called SOME PEOPLE NEVER LEARN. Previous editions have covered westerns, monsters and war strips; SOME PEOPLE NEVER LEARN parodies those cautionary tales of the fantastical. Yeah. Five stories, then.

Giffen and Mike Leib give us "Drew Fist, earth's Fussiest Defender in: I Stood Alone Against the Trash Masters From Beyond". How can any b-movie fan not lap that up? Drew Fist is a fastidious superhero battling aliens dumping their litter on the Earth. Including gynecological waste. It uses that post-modern trick where the text balloons increasingly comment on the lameness of the story. There's a good gag every page and you'll be chuckling. Probably on the outside.

Chris Ward can't do much with "White... is Right?", but "George Swami, cocktail party hypnotist in... The Bowties That Bind" is better. The title is probably funnier than the whole, though. This remixing/rewriting works so well with the Fifties artwork; there's not only the parodying of genre cliches, but also the cultural mores, and so we get uptight-looking Fifties characters talking dirty. There are comedy occasion cards that use the same trick, and it works.

Andrew Cosby gives "Fan Boy" a twist of Stephen King's "Misery", but it's really a gag at the expense of that easiest and most worthy of targets, George Lucas and the "Star Wars" legacy: boy timetravels to make Lucas rewrite his Skywalker odyssey, but a green alien's interference causes further tragedy. It ought to be funnier, somehow.

But best of all is John Roger's hilarious "Voyage to Nowhere". A five page story packed with hilarious Freudian gags that cohere wonderfully. A real highlight and an example of what this comic comedy rewrite really can do.

Hence, I'll be buying the other one-offs in this series and looking out for more. Funny comics like this are rare.

Doomed #3 has a Robert Bloch focused. It ends with an interview with author Jack Ketchum and how Robert Block went some way to mentoring him. I have never been a Block fan; since "Psycho", I always felt the psychology presented in his tales and twists were worthy only of postcard punchlines and fifth form horror writers. And I've not come across anything that has made me change my mind yet. I always felt that perhaps I was missing the black humoured point, and admittedly I don't know a lot of his work; nevertheless I always feel like rolling my eyes at the end of his stories. The first story in Doomed #3 is Ted Adams and Ashley Wood's adaptation of Bloch's "Fat Chance". Scratchy minimalist artwork tells the tale of an overweight wife and the comeuppance of an adulterous husband. Nicely rendered. I didn't roll my eyes, but I shrugged a shoulder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bloch

I had to similarly resign to a shrug with Scott Tripton and Nat Jones' "Richard Matheson's The Children of Noah". You could see the end and the lame joke a mile off when a man drifting through New England on some historic tour gets stopped by the police. Something mysterious about the townsfolk? His breakfast is big and hearty? There's a town barbecue due tomorrow? Stop me if you've heard it before... but the artwork is dark, gloomy, post-gothic, and the telling is smart enough.

Something a little different with F. Paul Wilson's adaptation of his own "Pelts". A cautionary tale for fur-trappers and fur-wearers. Gruesome enough for a chuckle... this is the kind of thing "Creepshow" paid homage to. And then you pass through "Circle Seven", passable prose by Chris Ryall inspired by Jeremy Geddes' gasmask-and-ghoulie cover. But perhaps best of all is Ivan Brandon and Andy MacDonald's adaptation of "David J Schow's Visitation", only in that its tale of demon conjuring has a reasonable bluff in it. The artwork is winningly chunky gothic, with a measured pace.